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Pizza Hut makes way for parking spots

By Laura Peters;
Published 11:05 a.m. ET Feb. 4, 2014

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The former Pizza Hut restaurant on North Coalter Street falls to make way for more parking spaces for the Staunton-Augusta Family YMCA. Work began Tuesday morning.(Photo: David Fritz/The News Leader, David Fritz/The News Leader)Buy Photo

Contractors demolished the former Pizza Hut restaurant along North Coalter Street on Tuesday, pulling the building down with one piece of equipment and scraping it up and dumping the debris into trucks with another.

The Staunton-Augusta Family YMCA purchased the building last year for $385,000 to add parking spaces for the recreation facility. The two sides agreed to the deal last year where Pizza Hut was expected to relocate within two years.

Pizza Hut recently moved its operation and opened a carry-out restaurant on Richmond Road.

YMCA Executive Director Morris Peltz said the removal will provide about 25 parking spaces, but the spaces will not be available until the weather warms up enough to lay down asphalt, which should be after March.

“We’ve really wanted to obtain that parcel of land for quite a while. The new owners, we had good conversations (with them), and at some point agreed on the purchase,” Peltz said in July.

The Staunton YMCA has purchased surrounding buildings before and has been trying to obtain the Pizza Hut property since Peltz has began working for the organization in 1999, he said. The YMCA previously bought a smaller building near what is now the tennis courts.